999 Revisited

A little while ago, I played a game called 999 on the DS which I reviewed. It’s a visual-novel style adventure game which has multiple pathways leading to different endings, this formula changes the game dramatically depending on your decisions in-game.
Last time I picked this up, I had only completed a single route (consequently the worst one in the game) and couldn’t be bothered with any more at the time.

My enthusiasm for writing having since depleted, I decided to replay it and get a different ending to see if it could change my somewhat ‘average’ opinion of the game.

This time, I played through two routes of the game and as an amendment to my previous review, please just assume that pretty much most negative stuff I said, is a positive depending on the route you take. The game is far better than to be judged on a single route alone, if you don’t want to play through more than once, then perhaps you might not want to pick this up. However, the point in this article is not to re-review, but merely as a platform for me to just talk about some of it in more detail. So I’m afraid I have to issue this before I go on.

Spoiler Warning: Click to view

I originally took the SUB path, but recently played the SAFE and TRUE endings.

So, from what we know, Akane becomes Zero in order to preserve the timeline in which she is saved by Junpei, she exists corporeally throughout the game and during what I expect are time mis-alignments, or connection issues when trouble is happening in one of the timelines, she begins to discorporate, resulting (oddly) in her being ill. The mask, albeit mainly used for the nerve gas, is, what I presumed, a reference to her problems as in Japan, breathing masks are used when a person is ill.

As Zero she goes through some cold decisions that will ultimately question her moral standing, it’s simple to assume that as a result of the requirements to survive, the game itself and the necessity to act the part throughout the modern nonary game, Akane has got Multi-Personality-Disorder. The entire modern nonary game is unfortunately predicated on the fact that a 9 year old girl can’t solve a simple sudoku which was fairly amusing.

While playing through the game, I believed that Lotus was Alice (All-Ice) as she is wearing weird Egyptian-esque clothes and has no connecting purpose to being there, however it became immediately apparent that the entire existence of Alice and Lotus was pointless after Alice is revealed to be a separate person all together.

A few plot holes/Inconsistencies were raised in the final True ending playthrough, after saving the kids through the vent, Seven loses Akane, who gets captured and put back in the incinerator. Why didn’t they go back through the vent? The rope should have been pulled back up as otherwise Ace would have been able to follow them. They had 20 minutes to do this yet they didn’t bother? Akane also mentions that they can hear the children that had made it through the door before them going up the stairs ahead of them, meaning there is another route to the other side of the incinerator surely? Other problems soon ended up being solved, with due attention.

There are some pretty good questions and answers here, as some of my thoughts were cleared up by them, they might be useful for other players with concerns.

It really is well worth the time of playing again, I’m so glad I did. It takes about 7-9 hours to do first time round but when again sometimes it might only take about 3-4 hours.

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About this thing

Michaela is a professional nobody at a small magazine company in England, when not living a generally dangerous lifestyle, shooting people, organising the mafia and drinking; she likes to read, play games, watch films and then ramble about the lot of them.